For those interested in Diaclone and other pre-Transformers, the history of the line, and the economics of rarity, this is a nice spotlight for the lesser known figures and definitely one that really is more than meets the eye.

To make it easy, we’ll refer to this toy as ‘Ironhide’. It’s not, but it is the toy that later became him, and it’s simpler to follow. Good? Good.

As collecting knowledge grows, along with fans’ interest in other areas of collecting, these pieces will still pop up to vex those who ‘see’ it, but don’t really ‘see’ it, as they just write it off as a standard Diaclone Ironhide. We’re conditioned to see that G1 Ironhide, and ‘know‘ what it transforms into. We’re all familiar with it. But this actually isn’t that toy. At all. Yes, it’s Ironhide. That is the exact same van as Ironhide. The stickers are different, though. Ironhide has clear windows, not coloured stickers. There’s the first hint that this is a completely different beast.

It doesn’t turn into Ironhide. It’s a ‘Change Attacker’, though. So not used for the Transformers line itself, hence the spot as the black sheep of the family. 44That’s right, it doesn’t have a robot mode. It goes from van mode to battle mode, hence the line name, ‘Attacar’, aka ‘Attack Car’. Clever, no? It was issued as a Diaclone toy, and released in Europe by Joustra. There are differences to both, and Maz documents them quite well. We can’t explain this like he can, so we’re not going to try.

Maz also notes the economics involved with ‘rarities and obscurities’, and how easily the market can be tipped. It’s amazing how quickly it takes to turn a rare and expensive grail into a common figure, going from a value of 3 digits, at least, to just 2. All it takes is one case-find. 48 toys. Antex green ‘Cliffjumper’ (again, not him, but the same toy, as with ‘Ironhide’) can still be picked up cheap, and the case find for that was years ago. There also wasn’t just a single case found for Ironhide. There were 3 cases. Enough to flood the market. It’s a prescient reminder of the danger in evaluating true value, and how much you should go to obtain something.

The article itself is wonderful, with lots of pics to enjoy. It’s available by clicking here, for TF1.Maz started a thread on this in the Allspark forums, and hopefully we can shine more light on these hidden gems. The thread is available by clicking here. Thank you, Maz, and we hope you find this a nice read for the weekend.